On the signification of fact in medicine, and on the hurtful effects of the incautious use of such modern sources of fact as the microscope, the stethoscope, chemical analysis, statistics, &c / by Wiliam Seller.

  • Seller, William.
Date:
[©1848?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the signification of fact in medicine, and on the hurtful effects of the incautious use of such modern sources of fact as the microscope, the stethoscope, chemical analysis, statistics, &c / by Wiliam Seller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    SIGNIFICATION OF FACT IN MEDICINE, &c. It is perhaps true that there cannot be two opinions as to what constitutes fact, either in medicine or in any other de- partment of science. Whatever is termed fact, every one is ready to exclaim, must be an absolute truth, unadulterated by any admixture of error. Of truths of this kind, beyond all doubt, the actual order of nature is made up,—of truths which are facts in the arrangements of the universe and of all its parts, inor- ganic and organic. But it is not less true, that it is from a mere abstract conception of truths of this kind, in the economy of nature, that our principal idea of the term fact in science is drawn; and this being the case, is it not plain that we come to apply a term framed on our conceptions of the perfection of nature to appearances more or less contaminated with the im- perfections of human observation ? Thus, what are called facts in human science, do not necessarily represent with exactness the facts of nature. Our representations of the facts of nature, though termed facts by courtesy, may, and often do, involve errors of very material moment. Notwithstanding the pro- verbial authority of the direct observations of sense, there were not wanting unsuspected errors in what were upheld as facts, even in those early times when the interrogation of nature was carried on solely by the unassisted use of the senses ; and there- fore there would be less advantage than might be expected, were the term fact confined to observations made in this simple man- ner. But, in the actual state of science, it is indeed impossible to limit the term to phenomena so easy of determination. As knowledge advances, nature must be scrutinized by more refined methods than belong to its earlier progress, and then truths, or supposed truths, which are exactly parallel, and in every way strictly analogous to the immediate observations of sense, come to be ascertained,—some, for example, by the assistance of a more or less complex apparatus,—others by inference from a larger or smaller succession of phenomena,—others by numeri- cal methods of research,—others, again, by deduction from a previously-established general principle or law. Truths so de-